OTTAWA — Battered women are morally entitled to kill their abusive partners, even those who are passed out or asleep, says a respected University of Ottawa law professor.

Elizabeth Sheehy raises the provocative idea in her new book, eight years in the making, called Defending Battered Women on Trial. It will be published Dec. 15 by UBC Press.

“Why should women live in anticipatory dread and hypervigilence?” she writes in the book’s concluding chapter. Would it not be just, Sheehy asks, “to shift the risk of death to those men whose aggressions have created such dehumanizing fear in their female partners?”

In an interview with the Citizen, Sheehy — who received a prestigious award from the Canadian Bar Association for her scholarship on women and the law this summer — answered that question in the affirmative.

Battered women can justly kill abusive partners “because a woman in that circumstance has already lived in captivity,” she said. “She’s already lived in a form of imprisonment and enslavement in a relationship like that.”

Sheehy likened women in abusive relationships to prisoners of war. “We would never say of a prisoner of war that it’s not just that she or he kill their captor to escape. It is just to kill to escape that kind of enslavement.”

While the legal system sometimes excuses battered women who kill abusive partners by accepting a verdict of manslaughter on compassionate grounds, that does not go far enough, Sheehy argues. “We should say you were right to kill to save your own life.”

Sheehy’s book, which is written for a general audience, is built around the trials of 11 battered women, 10 of whom killed their partners. She draws heavily on trial transcripts to examine the evidence and the legal strategies of the defence lawyers.

To select those 11 trials, Sheehy studied 91 cases of battered women who killed their partners between 1990, when the Supreme Court of Canada recognized “battered women syndrome” as a legal defence, and 2005. In all of those cases, she writes, self-defence was at least arguable.

Sixty-two were ultimately convicted of some form of homicide — 49 pleaded guilty to manslaughter — and the other 29 were either acquitted or spared a trial.

Sheehy was pleasantly surprised by the higher-than-expected number who were either acquitted or had charges dropped. But she said it was “disappointing and worrisome” to see how many women had pleaded guilty.

One reason is the mandatory life sentence for murder, with no parole eligibility for 25 years for first degree murder and 10 years for second degree murder, said Sheehy. Mandatory minimums are a “huge, huge barrier” to justice for battered women who kill their abusers, she said.

In particular, they are “an incredible threat” for women with children. “It puts them in the position of having to plead guilty (to manslaughter) to avoid the spectre of such a terrible sentence,” she said, even though many have some basis for arguing self-defence.

To remedy that, Sheehy argues there should be a “statutory escape hatch” that allows battered women charged with murder to escape mandatory minimum sentences.

Moreover, prosecutors should charge battered women who kill their abusers with manslaughter rather than murder, she said, to give them a chance to argue self-defence “without bearing the onerous consequences of failure.”

Charging battered women with murder is “so arbitrary when you know that there’s no other way that a woman can spontaneously defend her life,” Sheehy said.

“Men can kill women with their bare hands, and they do. Women almost never kill men that way. They can’t,” she said.

While very few women kill abusive men who are asleep or passed out, it’s “unfair” to charge them with first degree murder, Sheehy argues. “It’s not fair to characterize it as the most heinous form of murder, because it may be their own route to survival.”

These so-called battered women shouldn't be set free, but they shouldn't be tried for murder, either. They should be tried for breaking God's law, and then stoned to death. What part of this don't they understand?

Wives, submit yourselves unto your own husbands, as unto the Lord. For the husband is the head of the wife, even as Christ is the head of the church: and he is the saviour of the body. Therefore as the church is subject unto Christ, so let the wives be to their own husbands in every thing. Ephesians 5:22-24

A whip for the horse, a bridle for the ass, and a rod for the fool's back. Proverbs 26:3

These women should be less concerned about a few bruises as they should be more concerned with God's wrath:

Matthew 5:21-22

21 Ye have heard that it was said of them of old time, Thou shalt not kill; and whosoever shall kill shall be in danger of the judgment: 22 But I say unto you, That whosoever is angry with his brother without a cause shall be in danger of the judgment: and whosoever shall say to his brother, Raca, shall be in danger of the council: but whosoever shall say, Thou fool, shall be in danger of hell fire.

If the woman is being sodomized by her husband, with or without consent, then secular law should be rewritten to force her into a murder-suicide. But if her husband is raping her normally, in a Christian way that Jesus would endorse by upholding the Old Testament constantly, I can only blame feminism that it does not bring her a sense of inner validation to know she is useful as a wife, after being a burden to her father for so many showings of the firmament's IMAX presentation.

I can only blame feminism that it does not bring her a sense of inner validation to know she is useful as a wife, after being a burden to her father for so many showings of the firmament's IMAX presentation.

Sometimes those Dirty femnazi ideas make me feel bad for correcting my wife.
But then I pray, and Jesus Always raise me up and make me feel proud again!

Jesus - I am nothing without your love - just as my wife is nothing without my love.

Shout Glory!

"And ye shall know the truth, and the truth shall make you free."
John 8:32